Carol Sansour

Jul 11, 2024 | wordswithoutborders.org | Summer Farah |Chiara Marchelli |Carol Sansour

I often engage with the speculative as a language for engaging with liberatory political frameworks—let our minds wander toward the what-if and undo the bounds of the colonial structures we have learned and existed under for so long. Zaina Alsous is a poet who exemplifies this potential—her poem “The Workers Love Palestine,” first published in Jewish Currents, is the first I turn to when the rotted present makes a future seem impossible. Its futuristic setting is bare.

Jun 3, 2024 | wordswithoutborders.org | Carol Sansour |Olivia Duchesne |Olivia Snaije |Alexander Aguayo

Translator’s Note: The following poem by Palestinian poet Carol Sansour was slated to appear in Kontinentaldrift: Das Arabische Europa (Continental drift: the Arab Europe, 2023) but was among ten poems abruptly removed by German publishers Haus für Poesie. Edited by Ghayath Almadhoun and Sylvia Geist, the ground-breaking anthology features work by thirty-one poets writing in Arabic who are based in Europe.

Mar 27, 2024 | wordswithoutborders.org | Joyelle McSweeney |Chiara Marchelli |Carol Sansour

Did the butterfly illuminate youwhen it burned with the eternal light of the rose? –Mahmoud Darwish, “Now When you Awaken, Remember,”The Butterfly’s Burden, translated by Fady JoudahWhat comes after the end of the world? This question is continuously on my mind as I read the work of the ancients and my contemporaries, from Kim Hyesoon and Raúl Zurita to Antonin Artaud, Euripides, and Azo Vauguy—and I read them all in translation.